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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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faflec said:
That reminds me. @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail Mari's made original Genjutsu (TLitF, Silent Night, <whatever ultimate Genjutsu she used on her uncle>), so why has Hazou treated her like she's not a Technique Hacker?
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Handwave handwave mumble.

huhYeahGoodPoint said:
@eaglejarl, small thing:

Is it Noda Kaiyo, or Noda Kaiyu?
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Kaiyo. Fixed, thanks.

Why can't the Japanese name their kids something simple and easy to keep track of and spell, like 'Jenny', or 'Fred'? Why do they need all these weird foreign-sounding names?! *grumble, grumble*

Dictator4Hire said:
I'd rather have our clan focus on financial matters before we add more people and their expenses to our family's budget.
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You certainly can do, but you're in a perfectly fine financial situation. We're pretty much assuming that you have the money to do whatever you want as long as you don't get ridiculous.
 
eaglejarl said:
You certainly can do, but you're in a perfectly fine financial situation. We're pretty much assuming that you have the money to do whatever you want as long as you don't get ridiculous.
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I think the intention is to get enough wealth so that we can, in fact, do those ridiculous things. ;)

I'm surprised you didn't try abstracting wealth with wealth stress boxes and consequences given how much work you had to deal with it.
 
eaglejarl said:
Why can't the Japanese name their kids something simple and easy to keep track of and spell, like 'Jenny', or 'Fred'? Why do they need all these weird foreign-sounding names?! *grumble, grumble*
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I am still waiting for someone to do a Western style omake starring Harold, Norbert, Kate, Mary and... Kagome.
 
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Chapter 312: Breaking through the Heartbreaker
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    • The target was out in the distant depths of the forest, far beyond where a sensible person would go given the existence of chakra beasts. Such were the benefits of being a jōnin ( in her case), and having a surprisingly poor sense of self-preservation (in his). She leaned against a tree, gazing silently into the distance like a poet waiting for a new verse to come to her. Hazō had no way of telling whether that was the way she was feeling at that moment, or what she decided to show him after hearing his footsteps crunching in the snow. He never did.

    "Hazō," Mari said neutrally, pushing off the tree in an effortless smooth motion. "I was just about to head back. You did keep my dinner safely sealed, right?"

    "Of course I did," Hazō said. "Listen, Mari, I wanted to apologise. I'm not saying I didn't have reason to be angry, but I shouldn't have called you a cunt. That was out of line, and it's not something you should ever say to family."

    Mari snorted. "I called you a puling child, which also isn't standard fare for a woman talking to her clan head. Also, tip for the future, 'cunt' doesn't have as much impact as you think on a woman who's refined sleeping with strangers into a fine art.

    "So, want to head back? I'm still hungry, and if you're going to apologise for anything, it should be not letting me finish my dinner. Hurting loved ones is hungry work."

    She began to walk past him, in the direction of the estate.

    "Mari." Hazō raised an arm in her way. "Don't do this."

    "Do what, exactly?" Mari asked, taking a casual step back. "Wait, no, you're right. I still haven't apologised for the actual genjutsu. I am sorry for that." She bowed deep. "It was some of my finest work, but maybe some of my finest work isn't what you randomly do to family members in the middle of a meal. It also missed the original point of the training, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but maybe I was just being cruel, because being randomly cruel is a thing I do.

    "So if you want to mete out some kind of clan head punishment, that's your right. I hear good things about humiliating menial labour."

    "Mari, don't do this," Hazō repeated. "I came here to talk to the real Mari, not the one you want to be right now because you want to avoid conflict, or to block yourself off from feeling pain, or any of the other things you're so good at that most of the time we don't even notice."

    Mari shrugged coolly. "I am whoever I want to be. We all try, just some of us are better at it than others. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, Hazō, but my inner world isn't something you get to decide for me."

    "I'm not trying to do that, Mari," Hazō lied. "I just want to talk. If you're hurting, or if you're not hurting because you've decided to shut off some real part of yourself, then it's my fault. I'm the one who told you to be a tool for the clan. I thought I was doing what was best—for everyone including you—but I can see now that I screwed up. Badly. Maybe as badly as I have in my life, killboxes notwithstanding. I could see you falling apart, and I tried to fix that by taking something away instead of helping you mend what was there. I really am sorry."

    Mari shook her head. "You don't do this, Hazō. I'm not going to let you flagellate yourself for pushing me through a barrier I couldn't get over myself. Getting broken by your mother like that was pathetic. You know it was. I turned into a sobbing wreck because someone gave me fair criticism for once in my life.

    "What you did was important. What was I supposed to do with namby-pamby meditation gardens and being handled with kid gloves like I was an invalid? If you think you were trying to save me, it worked. I'm better now. Maybe better than I was, because I'm not buried under all those insecurities anymore. Now I can actually serve the people I love instead of being a drain on them. Take the win, Hazō. And then we can go back and I can finish my dinner."

    He'd have thought a lifetime of Keiko would leave him better prepared for beating his head against emotional walls, but apparently there were some things adults were just better at than children, and denial was one of them.

    Still, he wasn't going to give up. Not on Mari. Not ever.

    "No, Mari. You can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to me. I've seen enough Maris to know when you're clinging to one to protect yourself. Even a mistress of deception can't win when a mountain of evidence falls on top of her.

    "Do you remember when you saved us from the Swamp of Death? The first time we spoke to you, we were just some kids holding an alligator. Then you risked your life, your own life, to help the three of us run away with you. Even if at first it was just for Keiko's sake, you chose to be our teacher and our guide. Do you know how much we learned from you, when you could have just stopped with what we needed not to hold you back (as much)? Do you know how much you helped us to grow close to each other with trickery, and manipulation, and sometimes just a few words that we needed to hear? You're the reason Keiko, Noburi and I started calling each other by our first names, even if you did it by making Keiko tell us she'd kissed a girl.

    "That's exactly one Mari, no more, no less. And with her was another Mari, who scouted for us, and fought for us, and chose routes that were less safe than ones she could have used on her own. If I ever have to draw another squiggly line on a map, I might go insane without any of this Out business. And how many times did that Mari put her life on the line for us? One should have been too many; all in order to keep us safe. That Mari was willing to give her life to save Kagome in Isan, for no better reason than that he was Kagome, and one of us.

    "Sometimes that Mari went too far, and decided that she didn't need to be a person if it got in the way. She sounded a lot like that Heartbreaker woman we'd never met—who, by the way, was also a Mari. This was the Mari who tortured her uncle to death and had fun doing it, and who casually betrayed her loved ones to get what she wanted. She tortured Arikada without a second thought, because she decided that was what it took to get the job done. We'll come back to her.

    "There was a Mari who hurt us sometimes, for no real reason except because it seemed like fun. We learned bits and pieces from her as well, like how to recognise when she was there and stay out of sight. But I also think that now all of us have a little extra cruelty and sadism in our hearts, because she taught us how enjoyable it could be. Whether that's good or bad is a question for the Sage.

    "But usually that Mari lost the fight with the prankster Mari, who was insufferable, and kept us on our toes, and was an utter pain in the ass, and worst of all, kept ruffling my hair. But we loved her all the same because her torment gave us a kind of happiness we'd never found anywhere else. I probably never would have learned how to tie up Keiko without her. Also, turnabout was fair play, and wasn't that a lesson in itself?

    "And then sometimes there was the Mari who stood shoulder to shoulder with us against a hostile world, who didn't care about the odds because we were hers and she was ours. She's the Mari who got behind Uplift even though she's a cynic who doesn't see why the world at large doesn't deserve to burn. She's one of the Maris who took the lead amidst all the politicking and the disaster, and who's confused herself into thinking she's the only one.

    "There was a Mari who treated us as equals and as children, that not-quite-mother, not-quite-big-sister figure, and we didn't particularly care where that Mari was on the scale because all the points were family—though I strongly suspect that stacking that undefined relationship on top of 'ex-crush' really put Keiko's brain on the fritz for a while. I'd like the other Maris to remember that this one still exists, but also that she's only one of many."

    Mari stared at him silently as if her mind had cascaded across non-linear series of dimensions, and every piece was itself but also not itself, and there were exactly forty-two of them, and he had no idea why, and careening down the half-hypothetical pathway was, finally, a true understanding of how to greeble the zuzubel, and how it would change everything if he could just hold on to the memory when he returned to the understructured meatsack that was waiting for Mari to say anything, but since he could be here a while, maybe he should press on and say what he wanted to say before the wrong one of those Maris asserted herself and deflected his only chance to catch them all off-guard.

    "Mari, please don't try to go back to being the Heartbreaker. It's a Mari you've long since left behind, a Mari you've outgrown too far to ever reach again, but trying could destroy you. I'm not going to pretend that there isn't something still there—something that took the shape of the Heartbreaker, and something that's longing to take that shape again. The Heartbreaker pretends not to feel pain. The Heartbreaker tries to destroy the things she loves so they can't hurt her, but it doesn't work. It's never worked. And trying won't get rid of the pain, but if you're good enough at it, you'll get far enough to become a helpless monster without any soul left to protect.

    "There is something inside you that turned into the Heartbreaker, and something that wants to turn into it again. That something never went away, and I don't see how it ever would. It didn't go away when you tried to drown your self in pleasure and pain and power and cruelty and betrayal. It didn't go away when you met us and decided to choose redemption. It didn't go away when my mother hurt you, and it hasn't gone away now that it turns out I've hurt you more.

    "If you haven't got it to go away by now, you never will. It's built into Gōketsu née Inoue Mari. So choose one of the other options. See it. Understand it. Fighting the Heartbreaker didn't work. Trying to keep the Heartbreaker locked up didn't work. It's not going to, because all of the Maris want love, on the surface or deep down, and love means opening yourself to pain, and the Heartbreaker will do absolutely anything to escape from pain.

    "Let it try. Let it fail."

    Mari continued to stare.

    "At the end of the day, every time the Heartbreaker tries to take over, every time she tries to drag up the Mari who has better things to do than be a complete human being, it's a confession that you have pain to escape from. It's a confession that you have real, genuine love inside you, and that you can't make it go away.

    "There is a Heartbreaker in there. She's already destroyed so much, and she wants nothing more than to destroy everything else that could hurt her. There's also our Mari-sensei, and Jiraiya's wife, the woman who brings light to our lives, and forges unbreakable bonds both with and between the people around her. Each one is proof that the other is real.

    "And a reminder, for those who have forgotten the absolute basics of what bonds are: we love you, and we trust you, and there is nothing that can stop us from doing both of those things. You're Gōketsu, the family we chose for ourselves. You're Team Uplift, the ragtag bunch of misfits who are going to save the world. You're our sensei, our mentor, tutor, and guide, and don't think you've managed to get away just because we dropped the suffix.

    "Whenever the Heartbreaker stops floundering like an upside-down turtle and makes an honest effort to take control, we will be there. Whenever the pain gets too much and you start wondering whether it's all really worth it, we will be there. You are not alone, and if you ever try to face the Heartbreaker on your own again, we will shower you with such embarrassing amounts of affection that you won't be able to look any of us in the eye for months."

    After a long, long pause to see if he had anything else to inflict on her, Mari took a couple of steps back.

    "In the words of a girl who already has more wisdom than me buried under her own pain...

    "Go away. I need time to process."

    Hazō went away, but he left the storage scroll with the hot dinner behind.

    -o-​

    You have received 4 - 1 = 3 XP.

    NB: Ordinarily, a plan that covers less than two hours should be weighed accordingly. Don't know, don't care.

    -o-​

    Reasonable to talk about practical concerns it might have been, Hazō felt this wasn't the time (or, generally, the time for Mari to rally enough to present a rebuttal). Doubly so for eye colour.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes Wednesday 25th of December, 12 p.m. London Time.
     
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    • Oh that was wonderful.

    MARI: I can lie so well, how would you even know? Besides this is undoubtedly a good thing.

    HAZOU: (What would I do if I was talking to Keiko? Hmmm.)

    MARI: Take the win and go home, and we can go eat (because this is obviously less important than eating food).

    HAZOU: Motherfucker its time to break out the statistics. Thousandfold Rolled-Broadsheet-Bonk to the Head no Jutsu!

    MARI: @_@ gib dinner let process

    HAZOU: Whew, gotta remember that one.
     
    Velorien said:
    "In the words of a girl who already has more wisdom than me buried under her own pain...

    "Go away. I need time to process."
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    So, this is Mari saying both lines, correct? Because I have no idea if she's talking about Keiko or if she's talking about herself and has completely dissociated herself from her other selves.
     
    faflec said:
    So, this is Mari saying both lines, correct? Because I have no idea if she's talking about Keiko or if she's talking about herself and has completely dissociated herself from her other selves.
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    In dialogue, an unclosed quotation indicates that the following line is also said by the same person, often for effect.
     
    In a not-so-distant future...

    HAZOU: Welcome to the clan. Before I forget, here are your sealing loadouts and powerups. Talk to me or Kagome if anything looks like its running super low--by that I mean under a hundred. We'd go higher but logistics...

    HARU: What the shit is this

    KAIYO: Huh.

    YUNO: Can I trade the explosives for something that leaves more blood behind?

    HONOKA: No!! Explosives solve all problems!
     
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